ABSTRACT
Much of the warfare of pre-colonial West Africa was of a static character and consisted largely of the investment by the army of one people of the military and political centres either of another people or of a rebellious tributary. For the most part, these West African fortifications, whether for the protection of towns or of camps, consisted in roughly shaped earthen walls. The construction of even a modest wall and ditch fortification around a town or village occasioned great labour, and most villages and many small towns in West Africa remained unprotected in this way. As the prominence of fortifications implies, siege operations played a large part in West African warfare. Most of the fortified towns of West Africa lie in level ground, though sometimes enclosing a hill which was probably the original nucleus of the settlement and continued to be thought of as a possible last line of defence.
